Tag Archives: secreted images

Writing Process: The Thing of It

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I have my moments in writing. I can see something and even feel like I know it. And I write that down. The opening of Anori is like that, with Dee looking out over Battery Park as Hurricane Sandy arrives. The cremation of Apollo is real. As is swimming in cold dark water and hiking across the barrens and ice. These moments come clear.

Sketch by Francisco Goya (18th century Spain)

Then there is the in-between, the narrative connecting these scenes. I plod through this, repeating actions and images, forcing the characters to say things not because that’s who they are but because they have to do what I say. I lose their voices and the life of the work then fades into a morass not worth reading. It’s exhausting.

Writing Process: Lost Images

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As of late, I have been scouring through old images (prints, negatives and slides) in search of material for my Young Chronicles series. However there is one picture I cannot find, that of a boy looking back through the gap between a bus seat and the wall. All I can find is this lesser shot of his hand.

Boy’s hand on bus trip from Edmonton, Alberta to Whitehorse, Yukon.

Not being able to find the image of the boy haunts me in an odd way. I don’t know how I could have lost it and look for it again and again. To no avail.

The feeling reminds me of a fruitless search as a boy at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. There had been a exhibition on the Amazon that I had loved, but it was a temporary thing and had vanished forever.

Searching for the lost Amazon exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

That didn’t stop me from endlessly searching the corridors and rooms, peaking behind the dioramas, looking for the secret passageway that would lead me back to that magical place. I am still looking for that.